Nintendo bans gay characters from game

Nintendo's upcoming life simulation game - 'Tomadachi Life' - prohibits Nintendo 3DS users from being gay. Now, seeing as it's a life simulation game, you'd think that it would've been incredibly easy to just include it as an option, what with gay people existing in the real world. We didn't imagine them all, did we?

So maybe it is a case of Nintendo not being aware of the problem and this is just a load of clivtavists just shouting about stuff online?

Not the case. Nintendo are aware of the issue and said that they're not at all bothered and won't be doing a thing to change it for the English version.

They said: "Nintendo never intended to make any form of social commentary with the launch of 'Tomodachi Life.' The relationship options in the game represent a whimsical and playful alternate world rather than a real-life simulation. We are a games company first and foremost and our main objective is to create games and consoles for players to enjoy."

Of course, with any problem like this, a load of straight people can't see what the fuss is about. It seems straight people, like Nintendo, can't be bothered with things like 'empathy' and 'listening to people when they tell you they're being shat on'.

Tye Marini, the man behind the social media campaign trying to sort this out, said that 'Tomodachi Life' lets players create and control their own avatars (Mii characters) and then let them go shopping and spend time at theme parks and even go on dates. And so, Marini thought it might be a wheeze to marry his real-life fiance's Mii, but the game said 'nope!'.

"My only options are to marry some female Mii, to change the gender of either my Mii or my fiance's Mii or to completely avoid marriage altogether and miss out on the exclusive content that comes with it," said Marini.

He added: "It's more of an issue for this game because the characters are supposed to be a representation of your real life. You import your personalized characters into the game. You name them. You give them a personality. You give them a voice. They just can't fall in love if they're gay."

Naturally, you can think that the game sounds rubbish (and it does), but there's an underlying current here - video games have not represented gay people at all well. Or anyone who isn't white and heterosexual. If you can put so much coding effort in, so that individual hairs move on an avatar's head, surely it's easy to include gay people in these things?

Nintendo said: "The ability for same-sex relationships to occur in the game was not part of the original game that launched in Japan, and that game is made up of the same code that was used to localize it for other regions outside of Japan."

Maybe someone will say: 'if the gays don't like it, don't buy it! Play another game!' If things were that easy, people would quietly agree that a Subway could sell Halal meat and just toddle off somewhere else to buy non-Halal food - and we all know that's not how it works in the UK.

This is bad press for Nintendo who have been on Deathwatch for a while now, thanks to chronically bad sales of the Wii U, and now this.

Nintendo finished last year $464m in the red with the Wii U selling 2.72 million units, compared to the Playstation 4 and Xbox One flogging upwards of 7 million and 5 million units, respectively, despite being on the market for less time.

Er why are Nintendo on 'death watch'? A simple search will show that they are absolutely loaded from previous successes and can carry a good few failing products before having any problems? 3DS is selling pretty well and the recent announcement of simpler consoles for developing nations could be a massive winner, especially in China